The Worst Witch 2017 - The Frustration of Esmerelda Hallow
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Set in series 2, Esmerelda Hallow is trying to work out a way of getting her magic back, but the stupidity of her parents makes that difficult. And their arrogance. Mentions of abuse.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own the Worst Witch.

Please tell me what you think.

Hallow Sisters on my Mind, this is for you.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The Frustration of Esmerelda Hallow.

Hallow Manor was quiet, the servants who were dressed in neat, dark uniforms, went about their business silently like wraiths or ghosts as they served the current heads of the Hallow family and their children. The servants may have come to the manor happy at the prospect of good wages, but they quickly lost their interest after meeting Mr and Mrs Hallow. They had learnt to keep themselves on the peripheral edge of the Hallow family, and so refused to speak to them on a personal level since Mr and Mrs Hallow had made it clear they would be fired as soon as they said something personal that was not work-related.

Esmerelda Hallow, the eldest child of the family and a naturally kind-hearted and generous young woman, had long since given up trying to speak to the servants on a personal level, but she had tried many times in the past to make good relationships with them. Ever since the beginning of the school term, Esmerelda had become increasingly depressed.

Her parents had virtually isolated her in this mansion without giving a thought at all about her mental well-being. She had been to the non-magical world a few times, escorted by one of the servants, but it was like she was going out on her own. None of the servants who were ordered to escort her particularly wanted to go, but they had been promised a little bonus if they brought her back in one piece.

Those visits to the non-magical world were eye-opening and depressing at the same time; eye-opening because she had only visited place in the witching world, and had never really realised just how filthy the non-magical towns could be; their cars belched out disgusting fumes, their streets were littered with rubbish, and they never seemed to care about their own people. Whenever she visited that world, a world she simply didn't understand, a world that was colourful but seemed so bleached of colour and life…. it sickened and terrified her because she knew that sooner or later her parents would have no alternative but to send her to school there.

The thought depressed her even more. Esmerelda didn't know anything about that world, and there were no books describing how life was, but that was logical; there were no books about the magical world since everyone knew about the taboos and the laws held within the codes. But Esmerelda knew nothing about the non-magical world besides the basics, but that was not enough.

Her parents had promised to find a way to get her powers back, but Esmerelda didn't really hold out much hope that they would keep that promise - she may have been gullible when she had given her powers to Agatha thanks to her younger sister, Ethel, but she knew her parents would say one thing and not bother to help her.

Her parents seemed to live in a bubble where they believed the world would go their way simply because they were Hallows. They never seemed to realise that they were only one magical family, and besides Esmerelda had learnt years ago their promises didn't hold a potion. They seemed to think if they said yes to such a promise then it would appear out of thin air, but it didn't work that way.

But it was depressing for the elder Hallow girl because she had hoped that her parents or even other members of her own family would have found a way, a plausible and simple way, for her to regain her powers. But no. She was still powerless, and her parents hadn't found a single solution to her problem. Esmerelda imagined that it made a sort of weird sense, since the code said, in cases like this, the only way she could get her powers back was if the witch who took them gave them back, but like many other rules there were loopholes.

Esmerelda knew Agatha would never give her her powers back. The woman was safely locked away in a photograph which was now hanging on a wall in Miss Cackle's office at the Academy, and even if she was let out, the woman could find some way to escape or cause more trouble. She wasn't to be trusted either, the woman was manipulative, sneaky and she had no problems with demolishing the school she had spent so many years trying to gain from her sister and mother, and she didn't care if there were people, especially young witches, trapped inside.

She wished she was at Cackles, and thinking about the school she had worked long and hard in as part of her parent's wishes to be successful only served to depress her, but there was another reason she was depressed; in fact at first she had nearly driven herself mad with grief that she wasn't at school, she had really looked forward to being there with Ethel and Sybil, but now that moment was there and she wasn't with her sisters, Esmerelda had fallen into terrible bouts of depression and loneliness. Esme knew the year would be rough on Sybil and Ethel; Ethel would try to bluff her way through it like she always did, pretending to be strong, but deep down she would miss her, though all previous evidence said otherwise. One of Ethel's biggest secrets was she suffered from anxiety and depression, and she had been prescribed medication which she had taken, but then their parents in all their infinite wisdom had decided to stop it, believing it was shameful that a Hallow girl needed to be treated for something like that.

000000000000000000000000000000000

One of the advantages of being in her family home all the time when she wasn't with one of the servants going out to visit the non-magical world to help her familiarise herself with the culture was she didn't really see her parents. For some kids that might be seen as odd, but contrary to what some people might think, Esmerelda didn't really get along with her parents.

Not that they would notice, anyway.

It was their own fault. They were both so distant Esme often wondered if they were even her parents, and that her real parents had died years ago, and that Ethel and Sybil and her were being raised by strangers who'd been paid to look after them but hadn't bothered looking at the job description which read treat them with love and affection.

As she had grown up, Esmerelda had come to realise that her parents didn't really care about her or her sisters - her sisters even less, though they seemed more willing to love Sybil, though that was only because the younger girl was cute and sweet. As the eldest child of the three, Esmerelda had to spend a lot of her time with them, though it wasn't what she wanted really.

Like most teenagers, Esmerelda just wanted to have some fun. She wanted to go out, make friends, go to loud, raucous parties, do things that teenagers enjoyed. But would her parents let her? No. They had stopped her trying to leave the mansion more than once over the years when she had tried to sneak out - Esmerelda was sure they were using a spell to monitor her and her sisters, but she wasn't sure - and they would send her back to her bedroom so then she would keep studying those books for those stupid competitions and going out to that theatre to meet the people her parents called friends.

As always, whenever she thought of the people her parents called friends, Esmerelda grimaced. She hated those people. Hated their children, who were so spoilt and arrogant that she often wondered if that was how people saw her whenever she achieved something.

Esmerelda always hated it whenever she was forced to interact with one or more of those people, because they were not her friends, especially those with kids of their own (she would not think about Prince), and they were as obnoxious as they could be. Esmerelda was proud of her family heritage, she was pleased she came from a long line of witches and wizards. Just because she had lost her powers didn't mean she didn't have the right to be proud of her family, but right now she was so frustrated.

She had been waiting for either of her parents for the past few hours, but it could be a while before they returned home from either work or from the Magic Council. Unlike Ethel, Esmerelda wished her mother had never been given that particular role; her mother had always been arrogant and big-headed, but ever since she'd found out about what had happened with Agatha, her mother had become obsessed with 'dealing with Miss Cackle,' completely ignoring her own daughter whenever Esme had tried to tell her it wasn't Miss Cackle's fault.

Esmerelda hoped her mother didn't do something stupid to hurt Miss Cackle, but she could more or less see her mother's point of view; with Agatha locked away and because it was her own feud with her, Ada had made it easy for Agatha to steal Esmerelda's powers, but Esmerelda was keeping an eye on her mother to make sure she didn't do anything stupid.

Finally, her mother appeared in the atrium of Hallow manor. "Well met, mother," Esmerelda bowed politely.

"Well met, Esmerelda," Ursula Hallow returned in her usual cool manner before she took off her cloak and put it on a nearby hanger.

Esmerelda watched as her mother took off her work shoes and slipped on her home shoes - they weren't really that different, they were softer but Esmerelda sometimes wondered why her parents always insisted they dress smartly even at home, but this wasn't the time to worry about something so trivial.

"Mother, have you and father found a solution to restoring my powers?" Esmerelda asked politely, keeping her voice low and level so then the woman wouldn't detect the desperation in her voice. In her parent's eyes, well mostly her mother's, emotion was a weakness and one no respecting witch should be showing.

Hearing that question made Ursula go still for a moment before she bowed her head and carried on with what she'd been doing. That wasn't really encouraging to the teenager.

"No," Mrs Hallow said simply and shortly as though that was the end of the matter.

But Esmerelda had no intention of letting it go; she was becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated with what was going on now, and she wanted to escape the prospect of living in the non-magical world. She often forgot she didn't have her magic, she had grown up using it for years and the thought of not being able to use a spell now was distressing.

Esmerelda bit her lip. "Why?" she asked, deciding to throw all caution to the winds. She was getting seriously tired of asking this same question to her parents over and over again.

"You know what the code says-," Ursula said, but Esmerelda interrupted her. Not a smart move, but she was sick and tired of her parents making the same excuse. "Mother, I know what the code says. I know that ideally, Agatha Cackle would return my powers to me, but she won't do that. Besides she's trapped inside a picture in the headmistress's office at the Academy."

Mrs Hallow looked up, her glacial expression not shifting for a moment, but she was listening and that was the main thing.

"You know you can simply find a witch out there, one who's already dying from a terminal illness-," Esmerelda began but this time it was Ursula's turn to interrupt her, but instead of Esmerelda's approach which was to be calm and logical, Ursula was cold, spiteful, and harsh.

"What? Have a daughter whose magic comes from someone who's ill?" The derision in her mother's voice made Esmerelda's blood turn to ice. "It would shame the family-!"

"A family which already has an older daughter without magic," Esmerelda pointed out, "what difference does it make? If you find someone who is dying, and they decide to give me their powers, then I could easily bring glory to the family, that way people forget about me losing my powers."

Esmerelda made sure to alter her tone a little bit so then the proposal sounded appealing, and indeed for a moment it looked like Ursula was going to go for it.

The teenager simply could not understand why her parents couldn't think of a solution like that. It was so easy and simple - all they would need to do was find a witch with a terminal illness, preferably one who was in so much pain anyway that it made no difference at all if they had magic at all since it wasn't helping them, or a witch who was so ill that she wanted to die it wouldn't make any difference to them if they handed their magic to another witch.

Her parents weren't without influence and power, and with that power and influence came connections. They could effortlessly find out if there were witches like that in intensive care.

Esmerelda was almost sure the proposal was tempting for her mother to hear, but just as quickly as the expression crossed her face, Ursula's expression instantly stiffened icily. "No, I will not allow it, Esmerelda," Ursula's voice was harsh which was the woman's way of telling the teenager to drop the subject, "I will not let the family name be soiled-."

Esmerelda lost it then. "How about you come up with a solution? I'm sick and tired of coming to you to ask whether you've found a way for me to get my powers back, and besides, why should it matter if I get the powers from someone who's too sick it doesn't make any difference?"

"It matters to me, Esmerelda," Ursula's face was stone-like, dangerous, but Esmerelda didn't care even if all her instincts were telling her to shut up. "Our family name has already been sullied because of what Ethel did to you, and Miss Cackle did nothing-."

"How could she, Miss Cackle didn't come into the room until the deed was done?" Esmerelda interrupted her mother again, but she didn't care about the potential dangers, she was becoming sick and tired by her mother's complete blindness.

"She was responsible!" Ursula finally lost it, and with a red face she approached Esmerelda, and the teenager completely lost her argumentative mood in the face of her mother's anger. But Ursula said nothing. She just sighed and walked away.

Esmerelda watched her go, shaking slightly with adrenaline brought on by her worked up emotions and terror; under the Witches' code it was considered acceptable practice for parents to 'discipline' their children if they pushed the boundaries, but mostly it was to make sure they didn't make cause an accident with potions deliberately and caused terrible injuries. But like many other rules, some parents crossed the line between wanting to discipline their child and keep them from making a mistake in future and giving into their sadistic sides.

Her parents had crossed that line over the years with her, but in the last few years since she had hit her teens, Esmerelda had talked back to her parents. They'd slapped her whenever she did that, or whenever she refused to do what they'd wanted like whenever she went along with their stupid competitions and theatre visits when she just wanted to relax and go out and have friends, a life.

And her parents could get away with it simply because of the code. There was also another clause in the code which said they could get away with it since it was forbidden for another witch to interfere in their affairs, and Esmerelda knew it would do no good to complain. But she had used her own knowledge of the code to safeguard her sisters.

Oh, she knew how tempted her parents were from time to time to hit both Sybil and Ethel, even if they favoured Sybil more than they did Ethel, and the only reason they were tempted to hit Sybil was when the younger girl sometimes became scared or even when she had a nightmare.

Esmerelda had lost count of the number of times she had had a nightmare, terrible ones, and her parents had slapped her around for screaming her head off in panic. Her mother always lectured her that witches did not scream when they had a nightmare, but over the years Esmerelda had found ways to stop her parents - and her sisters - from hearing her scream.

Sybil's habits of crying and hiding under the covers of her bed often frustrated and annoyed their parents and Esmerelda had told them that they could beat her instead so they didn't touch Sybil. So each time Sybil cried or rushed to her room to hide under the covers on her bed, Esmerelda would take the beating for her. It hadn't been easy for her to persuade them to do that, but she had managed it, and she had tricked them into swearing their lives on the code - that had been tricky, she had needed to get them to say the first part of the oath, and then she had made them swear on their lives, and there was nothing they could do about that, they could have sworn on their magic and the effects would have been the same - so they would never beat her younger sisters.

Esmerelda had taken many beatings from her parents for things her sisters had done. A part of her sometimes considered telling her sisters about what their actions were doing, but fortunately, her parents weren't too sadistic; they knew that if they beat her too badly then they wouldn't have the eldest daughter to boast about anymore.

When she thought about it, Esmerelda had taken more beatings as a result of Ethel's mistakes than she had Sybil's problems.

That didn't surprise her.

Why did Ethel always have to think about herself?

Esmerelda loved her sisters, she had begged her parents to give her little sisters to play with, but she was so frustrated by Ethel's selfishness and poor decisions; did she really think their parents would have been happy with her for tricking Esme into giving her powers over to Agatha in such a manner? Ethel had known the whole time it had been Agatha. The fact she had been so cruel had been heartbreaking for the teenager who had given so much of her time trying to be Ethel's big sister, and a part of her now wanted to show Ethel the injuries she had accumulated over the years, but it was even worse now. She was getting tired of Ethel's endless quest to achieve something she didn't have a hope of getting - her parents love. They didn't love her and never would, why couldn't Ethel be realistic and see it?

Their parents had not been happy when they found out what Ethel had done, she had two broken ribs to prove it, but without her magic to cope with the injuries it had almost been unbearable. Esmerelda had used her magic to stop her parents from going too far, but she had also used her powers to heal her injuries. Even when she had been beaten until she was black, blue, purple, maroon, and whatever colour you could picture for a bruise, her powers would always heal the injuries and mitigate the damage, but thanks to Ethel's desire for mummy to talk to her, that was no longer possible.

A flash of movement and the bowed head of one of the servants as they passed her by made Esmerelda realise she'd been standing in the same spot watching the same direction her mother had taken to get away from her, so she silently left the hall and went back to her room - she had nowhere else to go too, and besides she needed to think.

When she returned to her bedroom, with the walls lined with pictures and bookshelves containing books that she had read through time and time again so many times she could probably repeat each sentence verbatim, Esmerelda stifled a scream of frustration.

Why did her parents have to be so stupid?

Esmerelda walked to the bed and threw herself onto it, letting herself bounce a bit on the mattress, and let herself think about the problem.

But as before she didn't have a clue about what she could do about her problem.


	2. Chapter 2

After consideration, I decided to add this one last chapter.

Enjoy.

* * *

The Frustration of Esmerelda Hallow.

A few weeks after her confrontation with her mother where she wanted to know what her parents were doing to get her powers back, Esmerelda was sitting in her bedroom reading a book. She and Sybil had endured a whole day, the seventh day in a row, at a spa with their mother - for a woman who had been thrown off the Magic Council, her mother had a lot of time on her hands before she wormed her way into a position of authority again.

It was only a matter of time.

Ursula Hallow was cunning, she would recover.

Despite her feelings towards her mother, Esme did enjoy the spa, but only the first day. She saw it needless the other six times, but there was another reason she disliked it.

Ethel had not been included.

Esmerelda sighed. She had her magic back and yet her parents were taking the credit for all of it, telling all of their so-called friends about it and claiming responsibility for the whole thing while ignoring the fact Ethel had been the one who'd actually put in the effort to find a solution whereas her parents had spent the last few months sitting on their backsides. They had even begun setting up a party to celebrate. She just wished she could get out of it, but her parents would not let that happen.

Her parent's so-called friends were coming, along with a few potential 'suitors' her parents were trying to set herself up with. She hated them but what she absolutely hated the most about the people her parents called their friends was they didn't understand the boundaries of age. It would not be so bad if she didn't have to deal with her parents and their stupid so-called friends all the time.

More than once Esmerelda had caught more than a few appreciative glances sent her way during those so-called parties. Each one of them had been sent at her tall, thin frame, and each glance had left her feeling disgusting. Her parents didn't care. To them, she and her sisters were prized commodities and they didn't care about their feelings in the matter, and knowing them they would probably have no problem going as low as to auction their daughters off to some dirty old man.

Esmerelda grimaced at the thought, and she wondered if her parents would be so callous to do something like that to a girl as sensitive as Sybil. Oh, who was she kidding? They would. They didn't care about their daughter's feelings. If they did that then the youngest child of the Hallow family would be scarred for life. But again they would not care. To them, emotion was a weakness and they did not show much emotion for anything besides their work and money.

She knew that they were jealous of Ethel for using that Founding Stone to restore her powers, but Esmerelda found it difficult to feel anything for her parents. It wasn't as if they hadn't had the opportunity or the motive to get someone ill, imprisoned, or dying, or perhaps all three, to give her their magic and it wasn't as if they couldn't just do that, but they were so lazy, rushing about bemoaning the fact she had no magic that they hadn't tried.

Seriously Esmerelda didn't have a clue what was wrong with the two people she called mother and father. They had wasted so much of their time giving her nothing but excuses, and now they were throwing a party, booking her and Sybil into visiting a spa like nothing had happened.

Esmerelda sighed as she thought about how she had gotten her powers back. When she had seen that Stone in Ethel's hands and learning what it was, she had been horrified that her sister had gone so far to help her, but inwardly she had been grateful. Ethel had told her that earlier that term the east wing had been demolished by Mildred Hubble by accident, though with the way Ethel described it, Mildred had done it deliberately.

But Ethel had to admit to her the east wing had been contaminated, stone by stone with the black magic caused by the annihilation spell Agatha had cast during the last term. Somehow the inspectors who'd come to see if the magic of the spell was dangerous had missed the fact that the annihilation spell's darkness had survived, spreading throughout the wing like a disease.

It would have come down eventually.

Esmerelda was just thankful no-one had been in that wing. If it had demolished with first years in it -

The Founding Stone had been discovered in the rubble, again by Mildred - but more by luck than design. The Stone had been put on display, and Ethel had taken the opportunity to steal it and replace it with a cloned copy after Beatrice had sneezed, taking Sybil around the school, and the younger Hallow had accidentally taken the stone from under the nose of a sleeping Miss Bat (why Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom thought to have Miss Bat, as likeable and friendly as she was, on watch duty, Esmerelda would never understand), and took it back to her bedroom. The girls had tried to smuggle it back down, using a wildfire spell to distract everyone so they could sneak back down to the hall in the confusion.

Later on, the stone went missing. Ethel had taken it and cloned it. She had been keeping it in the tower for safe-keeping. That made sense - there was nothing in the tower, and few went up there. Once she had cloned the stone, all Ethel needed to do was simply wait for Esmerelda to come to the castle so she could get her powers back.

Esmerelda had been outwardly horrified by what her sister had done - it was one thing to break the code over a trivial matter, and indeed even the punishment a younger sibling taking something from the oldest would endure was a slap on the wrist compared to what would happen if they played games with a Founding Stone.

But she had been tempted.

How could she not be? Esmerelda had seen the alternative. She had taken a few trips into the non-magical world, and she hated the thought of spending the rest of her life living in a world, going to a school, and not being able to perform magic. She had been using magic all her life, and thanks to Ethel's unimaginable selfishness that was gone, but it was a nice gesture on her part, showing her an artefact which was fabled and offering it to her so she could have her powers back.

There was only one problem - was Ethel doing this out of the kindness of her heart, which was a big surprise to anyone who wasn't one of her sisters, or was she doing this for herself? Esmerelda hated feeling that way, but she couldn't help it; she had lost her magic because her sister had been out of her depth. She had not realised until later Agatha and Miss Gullet could not be trusted, and she was nothing more than a puppet.

Esmerelda loved Ethel, she really did. But she definitely didn't want to be tricked into doing something stupid. She had done that once, and she had been gullible, and she had lost a year of her magical education, having to cope without being able to cast a single basic spell and had to put up with her parent's lack of assistance. Esmerelda swore never to get herself into another disaster like that but using a Founding Stone to restore her powers was asking for trouble.

In the end, she had used the Founding Stone to restore her powers. Ethel had cast a spell on the door of the room leading into the tower. The plan had been she would push Esme into the room, the spell would kick in and she would be trapped in there with no way out except for the window; Esme was many things, suicidal was not one of them. But she would probably have used the window to escape.

Unfortunately, Ethel had gotten the wrong sister into the tower. Sybil had gotten trapped inside. It wasn't her fault. The girl had been looking for her sisters, and heard that they were in the tower and got trapped because of Ethel's spell. Esmerelda didn't like Ethel's ruthless tactics, but she had to admit they were effective.

Esmerelda heard her sister's shouts for help, and she had gotten trapped while seeing in horror that her little sister had clambered out of the window onto a lower roof and was losing her grip. So there she was; frightened, trapped in a room, having to watch and hear her little sister fight to stay alive while their middle sister sat outside, manipulating events so then Esmerelda would have no choice but to take the magic of the Founding Stone.

So she did.

Esmerelda had been tempted from the start, and she had toyed with the thought after she had rejected what Ethel had done, but she had planned to do it anyway.

The feeling of her magic returning..Oh, it was amazing, for a whole year she had been without magic, and she had felt the magic of the stone surge through her. She had used the magic to save Sybil, but the Founding Stone went black, and Esmerelda realised she had drained too much magic from it.

Far too much.

It might have been her desperation when she had cast the spell, she had been so scared for Sybil that she hadn't even thought of the dangers of draining too much magic from stone, or it could have been her own lack of experience. Either way, the stone was drained of magic, and it didn't take long for the magic around the Academy to begin to fail. It was little things at first, annoying things; spells backfiring, spells not working properly, and then the Founding Stone began bleaching the magic of the school in order to reignite itself, but it also caused the spread of a magical ice that sought out the magic of anything. Unfortunately, that meant witches.

Mildred had rallied them (despite Ethel's rude comment about her not being a witch from a magical family - did that honestly matter? Mildred was trying to stop her from being expelled, and all Ethel could do was to be nasty) into finding a solution, but Sybil and Esme had remembered an old and obscure story their mother had told them, about a Hallow witch who had reignited a stone.

Strangely, with the unstable magic of the castle and grounds, there were tiny spectres of ancestors Ethel, Esmerelda, and Sybil had probably heard about as children as part of their lessons on the history of their family. But they weren't very helpful - in fact when Ethel gave a hurried account of them, she had commented that they reminded her of her, her arrogance and meanness.

Esmerelda had tried to reassure her that she wasn't mean, but it was no good. The story of Mirabelle Hubble, a magical ancestor of Mildred which proved the girl was a witch in the minds of people like Ethel, though Esmerelda had already known she was a witch, had been frightening in the implications. Esmerelda didn't know what was worse; a Founding Stone going out, forcing an adult witch to hand over not just her own magic, but the magic of over twelve generations, all the way down and steadily losing their knowledge of the magical world until the thirteenth born in the family, Mildred Hubble, became a witch, the first magical member of the family generations.

Or the fact one of Esmerelda's own ancestors had taken the credit for something no Hallow witch would ever do. Hand over their magic and the magic of other generations, no Hallow witch with that kind of person would ever do something like that. The art teacher Miss Mould happened to be a member of Agatha's coven, and when the frost had settled in her plan was simple; wait until the magic was completely gone, and then the spell over the picture would have broken, and then she would be free.

Mildred had found that out, but she had been frozen and then released by her non-magical mother Julie. Esmerelda, Sybil, Miss Hardbroom and Ethel had all gone to the tower - usually, Miss Hardbroom would have transported herself and them up there, but with the ice setting in, affecting their magic, all of them had felt uncomfortable. It was ironic - Esmerelda had hoped for her magic to be restored for a long time, and yet at that moment, she would have been happy not to have it.

She had not imagined this would happen. Now, because of her, the entire school would be frozen.

Miss Hardbroom had been prepared to sacrifice her magic, and the potions mistress had been terrified of the prospect of giving her magic up after hearing about the story of what Mirabelle had done after Mildred had run off after Miss Mould. But Ethel decided to take her place.

Esmerelda shook her head. She didn't like thinking this way about her sister, but she couldn't help it. Ethel had been prepared to take Miss Hardbroom's place, and donate her own magic to reigniting the Founding Stone. Now there was nothing wrong with that, but Esmerelda wondered if Ethel had only done it to gain some kind of recognition, that everyone would find out she was willing to sacrifice something she really held dear.

It was not a nice thought.

And yet Ethel was prepared to hand her magic over to the stone, but what it would have done to her own magic, and Sybil's, Esme did not know.

Ethel had made a speech - typical really, the entire school was freezing up and everyone magical inside was turning into a frozen block one by one, and Ethel was wasting her time making speeches that made little difference, talking about statues and stuff like that. Esmerelda had caught sight of the look on Miss Hardbroom's face. The potions mistress had clearly been thinking "Get on with it if you're going to give your magic to the stone," and before they'd frozen Esmerelda had thought much the same thing.

And Ethel was upset when the ice melted to find Mildred being the one to give her magic to the stone. Esmerelda had been upset as well, but for different reasons - the Hubble family had suffered twice because of a Founding Stone, and despite everything she had done to Ethel, Mildred did not deserve this.

Miss Mould had gotten a change of heart - Esmerelda would never know what Mildred had said to the woman, that girl had a way of getting under people's skin - and she had reversed what Mildred had done, giving her own magic to the stone.

Esmerelda didn't know what happened to the woman, she knew that the Great Wizard had taken her into custody but besides that, she genuinely did not know. She didn't care either.

The important thing was she had powers back, but she could have seriously done without the stupid party had parents had set up; she knew that she wouldn't enjoy it. The spa had been okay, but it would have been even nicer if Ethel had been allowed to come. Esmerelda had never been able to work out what her problem was with Ethel.

She knew her mother's 'treats' of taking her out shopping, going to the spa, where she only did what her mother wanted and got what her mother wanted her to have had pissed Ethel off, but there was nothing Esmerelda could do about it for the time being. Her mother's last slap had left a terrible bruise down her back for days when she refused to buy a pair of shoes her mother said looked fantastic but were, in fact, painful, but she'd recovered.

She wasn't kidding herself - she knew that Ethel would be throwing a fit, going on about how unfair it was for only her sisters to go to that spa and not her.

Esmerelda closed her eyes and wondered if she should go to her sister, or whether she would be making things worse only for a knock to come from the door. Esmerelda looked up - it wasn't her parents, they didn't knock. Ever. To them, a door was just a barrier to get what they wanted, and besides, they didn't like walking and knocking like ordinary people, when they could just transport in.

Sybil?

Perhaps.

A servant?

Maybe.

"Yes, come in?" She called.

The door opened and Ethel came in. Esmerelda sighed under her breath, but she mustered a smile for her sister. "Hi, Ethel, are you okay?"

"I think so, how about you? Pampered enough?"

Esmerelda's kindly facade faded. "Don't you dare, Ethel. I don't mind going to a spa once or twice, but I've been there more times than I would have liked. Look, do we have to have a fight?"

This was what she hated. She was angry with her parents for throwing away Ethel's medicine when they discovered she was taking something for her anxiety issues, claiming she would be shaming their family. She hated her parents for that, it was the same mindset they had used when they had dug their heels in and moaned about her not having magic when there were solutions to the problem, like finding someone who was ill it wouldn't matter in the long run if they had magic in the first place.

Her parents acted like such martyrs when it came to talking about the family name and their history, but when it came down to it, Esmerelda had to admit to herself that her parents didn't exactly live up to the name Hallow.

Ethel was silent, meaning she was obviously thinking it over.

"Come here," Esmerelda said, holding out her arms, and let the younger girl come over to her and snuggle into her arms. "Listen, if it were up to me, you would have come to the spa. I think she was mean not letting you come."

"Really?"

Why did she have to do this? "Yes, Ethel," Esmerelda said, making it clear that she was being serious.

Esmerelda was tempted to tell her little sister that she was wasting her time - their parents were never really going to talk to her, and with what had just happened with the Founding Stone, where they didn't know what Miss Cackle had in mind for a punishment, or, Merlin forbid, the Great Wizard himself, for what she and her sister had done with the Founding Stone..

But she didn't.

Even if she did start talking about how their parents didn't care about them, Ethel wouldn't really listen to what she said. She was just too stubborn but Esmerelda hoped in the future she would wise up. In the meantime, Esmerelda would continue getting frustrated by her sister's never-ending quest to snatch some attention and even respect from her parents.

But Esme was not holding her breath.

"There's a party tomorrow night," Ethel said, her voice holding a small amount of envy with a touch of anger, making Esmerelda sigh - what would it take for Ethel to get the hint she wanted nothing like accolades of the type their parents dumped on her shoulders? "Are you happy about that?"

Esmerelda decided to give Ethel a taste of what she hated the most about those parties. "And spend an evening being told in as few words as possible to stand in a corner and look pretty, attracting the perverted looks from our parent's 'friends' who eye me up like I'm a prized side of beef or a prostitute to use and discard? No thanks."

As she had hoped the word prostitute caught Ethel by surprise and the younger blonde. "W-what?" she whispered in shock.

"You heard me," Esmerelda looked away, remembering all the times where her parents had forced her into the same room during the functions they had at the manor, where she was forced to look pretty and alluring to older men. "I hate it. The way they look at me, just be thankful it hasn't happened to you and Sybil."

She left the 'yet' out of it, but the implication was still there, and it scared Ethel.

"But surely they wouldn't do that to you, give you to someone else-?"

Was she trying to deny the truth?

"Ethel, all mother and father care about is looking good and getting more out of life rather than enjoying what they do have," Esmerelda interrupted sharply, "and if that means marrying me off to someone older and rich, then they would do it."

It was an old nightmare for her. Ever since she had worked out how soulless her parents were, how indifferent they were to their children, Esmerelda had grown terrified that her parents would sell her off just to score a deal, like she was a business product for them. It hadn't taken her long for her to realise that was all she and her sisters were to her parents, business products to sell off. Esmerelda was getting tired of her sister's blind ignorance, she was tired of her sister ignoring the truth, and she hoped that what she was going to say got into her mind before she went mad.

"Surely they wouldn't do that, sell us all off to meet an arrangement?" The horror in Ethel's voice broke Esme's heart, but what hurt her more was the way she said it, the younger girl had clearly had the same thought she had about how their parents saw them.

"Ethel, I spend more time with them than you or Sybil do," Esmerelda pointed out, hating herself for basically coming out and saying to her sister who just wanted the respect and love of her parents. But she had had to say it. "And let me tell you, they don't care about us at all. Mother and father are waiting for an opportunity to sell us to the highest bidder for some reason."

"Surely that's against the code-?"

Esmerelda shrugged. "It is, but its not against the code to set up marriage contracts. As long as our parents and their stupid, so-called friends don't push the boundaries, then the Great Wizard and the Magic Council will not intervene. And our parents will do it if they think it will help them gain an advantage. They don't care about us, Ethie. Take our mother, you know how she forged a petition to get Miss Cackle kicked out of Cackles. She didn't do that out of the goodness of her hearts. She wasn't acting like a parent then, lashing out because of the harm being done to one of her children. She did it because she saw me as a means to give the family more power and influence, with marriage or by some other deal, so when I lost my powers because you tricked me into giving them to Agatha - don't, let me finish - she thought she was going to lose those opportunities. That's why she forged that petition."

Ethel, however, was more focused on the reminder of her little trick. "No-one is ever going to let me forget it, are they?"

Usually, Esmerelda would be reassuring, but she wasn't in the mood. "Since you asked, no," she replied, shocking the younger girl. "Seriously what do you expect?" she went on. "You tricked me into giving my powers to a known and wanted criminal. You knew she couldn't be trusted, and yet you tricked me into giving my powers over, and for what? Did you really think you'd be loved for that? You're so selfish and shortsighted, it's pathetic."

Tears began welling up in Ethel's eyes, and Esmerelda felt guilty but she didn't give in. She had to be honest with Ethel, it may be the only way to get through to her for once, and wake her up. "You're going to have to live with it, Ethel," she said quietly. "Mother and father will never give you what you want, deep down inside you know that. It's time for you to grow up. You can lie to yourself all you like, you can lie for the rest of your life, but if our parents succeed in marrying me off, they will do the same to you, and then Sybil. You know how she is around people she doesn't know, would you want that for her?"

Ethel didn't reply. Esmerelda was unsure if her sister was finally seeing the big picture or whether she was only seeing what she had been seeing for the majority of her life.

She didn't care.

Esmerelda sighed and looked away.

"I am sorry for tricking you," Ethel whispered.

Esmerelda glared at her. "I want you to be honest with me. Do you hate me?"

Ethel yelped. "No! I've just helped you get your powers back. How could you ask that?"

"Because you tricked me into handing my powers over in the first place. Do you want our parents to rip your life apart in the same way they've ruined mine?! Ethel, there is a whole world out there. I'm a teenager, and yet I've never been allowed to experience it because of them. Do you never think for one second I want to spend my summers, my life doing things I want to do instead of going to those stupid theatres with our parent's stupid friends, going through those competitions and stressing myself out? I want to have a life of my own, not one where everything I do is dictated by those two! Do you really want that?"

The moment she finished her tirade Esmerelda found herself mentally exhausted by it all, but she had suddenly lost it when Ethel had made the mistake of apologising to her.

"I have spent the past few months being stuck in this manor, Ethel," Esmerelda said, not bothering to tell her about her visits to the non-magical world, "and I've been surrounded by these books. Do you have any idea what it feels like being surrounded by them and knowing that you can't use any of the spells held inside them? That is what you did, just to get the attention of a woman who is not worth it. I'm grateful for you using the time you had to get my powers back, you did more than them. But that doesn't mean I can't resent you for tricking me into losing them in the first place."

Ethel was sniffling.

Esmerelda melted and she pulled the girl into her embrace, but she didn't apologise to her sister for what she had just said. "Don't try to get her attention, Ethie. It's not worth it and she won't listen anyway. Next time, don't trick me again. Next time, you might not be able to get me out of it."

"I won't," Ethel whispered, digging herself into her big sister's embrace.

00000000000000000000000000

Please tell me what you think.


End file.
